Download PERSONAL SALVATION What does it mean? The Christian Faith

PERSONAL SALVATION
What does it mean?
The Christian Faith has ever proclaimed a Personal God
and with that proclamation a Personal Salvation.
What does this mean?
"Personal Salvation" and "a Personal Savior" are terms
that need definition and a brief examination of the
semantics involved. In many cases, both to the faithful
and to the onlookers, this evokes a sense of "the warm
and fuzzy," a kind of emotional intimacy, a "touchy-feely"
kind of emotional experience (And it is true that human
emotion is an important element of the human soul,
created by God, and of the human experience, but it is
not all there is to the soul or the person).
For this observer, the phrase "a personal Savior," set in
emotion, has always evoked a picture of a pretty little,
four year old goldilocks, dressed in her best white
Easter dress and bonnet, with black patent leather
shoes with little, shiny brass buckles, holding a little
white basket full of freshly picked daisies, with a golden,
demure little smile and saying from the depths of her
sincere little heart, and with the cute, little lisp of
post-toddlerhood, "Desus is my puhsonal Sayv-yoh!"
This does melt my heart, and like my own little collection
of granddaughters, I only want to hug her, or hold her
in my arms, or dandle her on my knee for preciousness
and delight.
But, given this delight, and all the other blessed
manifestations of the love of God for the human soul
and the great intimacy that this entails, "Personal
Salvation" still means a great deal more than this.
First, it means that there is a Personal God. Yes, He
has emotions too. But, above and beyond that, it
means that God is a Person. This is the highest, or
among the highest, revelations of all. God is not a
force though He has all power. He is not the sum of the
Universe, and worlds without end, the sum of all
knowledge, the sum of all microparticles on down, layer
after layer into all microcosms, nor is He the sum of all
galaxies and universes—the ever-expansive
macrocosms, nor is He the sum of all knowledges and
mysteries and philosophies and ideas, the sum of all
laws of physics (or metaphysics), however many we
many find as we learn to travel on out and into them.
Rather, He alone stands beyond them all and has made
them all, and He introduces Himself to us as the only
One who Alone dwells beyond them, the Sole Dweller,
in a Realm which is called The Uncreated. He alone is
Uncreated. He is the Uncreated Person, the highest
Thing of all.
All else is Creation, his work. When Moses asked,
"Whom shall I say sent me?" He replies, "Tell them, 'I
AM' or 'I AM THAT I AM' sends you." This is his very
Name, YHWH, the Hebrew word given, called "The
Tetragrammaton," or "the Four" consonants not giving
us for certain the full pronunciation of his name. (We can
reverently call Him Yahweh, yet his name will always be
bigger than anything we can compass with our minds.)
Yet, He identifies Himself as a Person—maybe THE
PERSON would be better, and He gives us, reveals to
us, his personal name. He has Consciousness as
Person: He has Intellect, Emotion, and Will. He has
Personhood; He is Personhood. Yet, He is Uncreated.
It is not, "I have come into being, but I AM Being." No
one else can successfully claim the same. He alone is
Uncreated...The Uncreated Person.
Personal Salvation?
In all the Universe (and all the Universes of Universes)
which are made for his pleasure, and for ours—to
explore them forever and into all Infinities with unending
Joy, He has shown us that He has created only two
types of Persons, Angels and Humans. No other
Beings, not even the warm, yes, even emotion-bearing
animals—made to be our "pets", that is, for our loving
dominion, nor any other intricate chemical molecule, nor
nebulae, nor cosmic interaction, nor philosophy, nor
wonder of nature can stand back and look at itself or
regard its placement in the universe and consciously
consider it. We two species alone can do this, and
though we humans are yet limited by our fallen limits of
knowledge, yet as Persons we can ever project out into
the cosmos and consider what is there. Nothing but
Personhood can do this.
We are both, Men and Angels, "made in his own image"
as He Himself tells us. Otherwise, we humans, who
have fallen away from knowledge of him, would not
know it. We are made for his Pleasure and as the
Objects of his Love and of his Fellowship. We are
made to be Persons like Him, yet we are created while
He is Uncreated. The depths of the Mysteries of this
are made to be without End. Yet, we begin. It will be
our greatest Joy to explore them with Him "world without
end," from the unlimited intricacies of the petal of the
flower to the collisions of galaxies—and these we will
find not to be random and destructive but the
brushstrokes of his ongoing or ever-unfolding Creation.
Of Angels, we know not the Magnitude of their Beings,
nor span of their types and species, and all the Heavens
may be fuller of them than any imagination can contrive,
but we know that He made all of them at or before the
Beginning of Time. They do not pro-create or increase
though they may well live in many societies and orders
and cultures throughout his vast expanses. We know,
because He has told us, that 1/3 of them fell from
fellowship with Him by the Sin of Pride through the
choice of Will with which he also invested them. They
attempted to usurp his realm of Uncreatedness, and we
are told that the other 2/3 restrained themselves from
such folly, but of the hugeness of the number we have
no knowledge. What is 2/3 of 10-to-the-whatever
power God has set in creating them?
And, he made us. Humans. Even we cannot count
the billions of us that have come and gone in the
pro-creation that He set in motion with Adam and Eve.
But, He knows. We fell at the temptation of these
Beings who, even in the Fall of their Wicked Ones, are
higher than we and who engineered Sin against us.
But, it was not unknown to God that this should be. It is
the Mystery of the Ages. Can we blame God? This is
foolishness, and it is too high for us to know. But, He
has chosen to reach across time, dimension, space to
become one of us, to pay the terrible cost of our
Rebellion—something He does not do for the
Angels—who do not suffer the same temptations as
those of us who are made of dust—out of the very
Material Elements that we will eventually fully rule.
In his great Nature, his Utter Oneness, his
Uncreatedness, his Being as the Prime Mover of all
Creation, He has revealed Himself as having Three
Persons. He voluntarily chose to separate his Persons
and send the Son to experience Death—which is
Separation—for us and so deliver us from Death by
paying its penalty in our Place. The One who is only
Life and Light, separated Himself from Himself and felt
the terrible pangs of Death Itself, our Enemy, so that He
could show that even it has no triumph over Him. Even
it is only his created servant.
This restoration of our person to his, this is Personal
Salvation, and the fullness of it is written by Him, in his
Son's own Blood, in the New Testament (and in the Old)
which we hold so dear. Our own very person is meant
to go on forever in fellowship with his Person in glories
and joys which we cannot yet imagine (and to continue
forever with others of our species who accept his
redemption, and, yes, fellowship with all the holy angels
too!). We are not some unconscious drop in a blissful
sea of nirvana or atman as darkened religions hope for
"at the best," but we are Persons in all the noble fullness
of Personhood, meant to behold all Eternity in the
company of the Great Uncreated Person...and the very
grand crowd of our fellow persons with him.
As the Book of God to Man ends, this is the scene: As
Peter also witnesses, all of creation passes away as a
"fervent heat and a great noise" cleanse away all the
earthly and even the vastly cosmic traces of sin and
death; as Isaiah adds as a witness of the same but from
centuries before, even the heavens (space) in all their
great depth will be rolled up and put away like a scroll, a
two dimensional piece of paper — and all that is left is
the Great Person of God on his Great White Throne, as
St. John beholds and reports, and gathered around Him
all the Angels and all the Men of all the human
Ages—his created PERSONS—awaiting the final
declarations of Judgment, some to Eternal Life, others
to Eternal Death, as his Elect prepare to enter a New
Creation that He will open before them.
This is Personal Salvation! "Today is the day to
believe." Enter now. By the means of Faith He sets
before us, essentially just agreeing to believe and follow
Him, let your own Personhood enter Everlasting Life
with his own Person, Christ: Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, world without end. Amen.